In today's digital communications devices, which carry digitized voice (such as second generation cordless telephone or CT2), it is important to realize the situations that can occur during a communication session. When a communication link has been established and two parties are at opposite ends of the communications link, a reliable communication path must be maintained. If the communication path fails, the units should be capable of muting the digitized voice, thus preventing the end users from hearing high noise bursts from corrupted receive data. In current systems there are very few ways to obtain this function, and the ways that are present are very slow to respond, or easily falsed.
In addition, in digital communication systems using time-division multiplexing, synchronization is required so that a communication unit receiving information signals "knows" at what times the information is to be received. Once synchronization is achieved, the communication signals received are subject to deterioration for a variety of possible reasons. Among these are loss of the transmission at the other end of the communication link, interference on the same or an adjacent channel and fading of the received signal due to increasing distance between the transmitting and receiving units. When a "bad" signal (or portion of a signal) is received the user of the receiving unit may hear annoying pops or bursts, or may even lose the communication link. Thus, a need exists for an communication device that overcomes the aforementioned problems.